Saturday, December 13, 2014

Saturday, December 13, 2014. Chaos and violence continue, the Islamic State shoots down a helicopter, the Yazidis have a hired gun paid for with US money, we examine Barack's non-plan yet again but this time focusing on the line of questioning provided by US House Rep Ted Poe, and much more.

Tian Shaohui (Xinhua) reports: Insurgents shot down an Iraqi army helicopter and
killed the two pilots aboard during clashes in Salahudin province in
north of Baghdad, a provincial security source said on Saturday.The crash occurred on Friday near the town of al-Mu'tasim, just south
of the city of Samarra, some 120 km north of the Iraqi capital of
Baghdad, during the battles between the Iraqi security forces and
Islamic State (IS) militants around the al-Mu'tasim, the source told
Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The Tuesday Subcommittee hearing was an embarrassment and we've called out Subcommittee Chair Barbara Boxer and Ranking Member Rand Paul. We've largely ignored the others -- the spook, the hired gun, all of them.

The hired gun?

When news of Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar broke, at this site we were for air drops of food and water and medical supplies for the thousands trapped on the mountain by the Islamic State and we were against bombings. We built our case around the plight of the Yazidis historically. We ignored one person, one woman, except to offer a Tweet by a journalist of the Cry Baby.

Cry Baby may not have been a fair call when she was speaking before the Iraqi Parliament and shooting out the tears. It may have been fair. We didn't call her that then but I did think it.

And Cry Baby went on to become a hired gun. Early on in August we noted the Yazidis had no US p.r. firm but that they were being used in the US in an effort to promote wider war on Iraq.

Let's also note the bitchiness of Yazidi speakers in Iraq.

Iraqi Christians were being attacked and killed and when the Yazidis ended up trapped on the mountain, a number of them started whining to the press that Iraqi Christians got all the attention.

Iraqi Christians get very little attention in the mainstream media. When the western press does cover them, it's usually because they're taking up arms in Iraq to protect themselves.

Whether it's true or not, bias charges are better left to others.

When there are at least two groups under attack and one of them whines the other gets more attention -- true or not -- it looks petty and bitchy.

And here's a little more reality for the Yazidis, Christians are a larger group in the world and when you start whining that Iraqi Christians are getting more attention -- especially when they're not -- you risk pissing off a lot of people who will no longer help you amplify your issues.

And while outsiders can say that Palestinians get far more attention, for a Yazidi to write that also looks petty and bitchy -- so maybe Cry Baby shouldn't have written this post?

Cry Baby.

Again, we've only previously noted her in a journalist's Tweet. And that was due to a request and due to it being pointed out that she was a woman, "you run a pro-women, feminist site and you haven't noted her."

We should probably name cry baby, I don't think she was named in the journalist's Tweet, just identified as a Yazidi who was a Member of Parliament. We did name her when she was in a helicopter crash. Her name is Vian Dakhil.

And since her tearful performance -- and I am calling it a performance -- she's attracted foreign money but no one wants to talk about that.

No one wants to question how this woman's everywhere all the sudden.

She was at the hearing on Tuesday, she was speaking to the Woodrow Wilson Center, at John Cabot University, she's just been everywhere outside of Iraq. And the reason is she's now a hired gun to promote war and she's represented by a public relations group.

And as I listened to her spin at Tuesday's hearing, I knew all of that but thought, "There's so much more to focus on." Then she started making the media circuit.

First off, know your facts or don't appear before Congress.

She's lucky she appeared before Boxer and Paul who are so eager for war that they also don't care about the facts.

Before the Subcommittee she tried to present herself as the voice of the Yazidis.

She is not.

Some Yazidis bill themselves as that and that alone.

Others bill themselves as Kurds.

That split alone, forgetting everything else, means she cannot speak for all Yazidis.

Equally true, she's not from the city with the biggest concentrations of Yazidis (that would be Shekhan followed by Sinjar -- she is from Mosul originally and then moved to Erbil).

At the hearing, she made one ridiculous statement after another. Here's one example:

Since the invasion of the so-called Islamic State in June 2013, I have been working tirelessly to bring attention to the plight . . .

It was January, at the start of the year, when the Islamic State seized Falluja. And the Islamic State was in Iraq prior to that. As a member of the Iraqi Parliament and as a member of the KDP, she's actually supposed to speak for all of Iraq and should know these basic facts. Added: April 8, 2013 is when the press begins -- world press -- acknowledging the Islamic State is in Iraq. They were there prior to April.

It was an awful hearing and we would have ignored her but then she went on NPR's Here and Now and NPR highlights this section of her remarks regarding what the US needs to do:“They first started out with a great mission and attack on ISIS, and
that made us very happy. That was only for one week. After one week,
they stopped. They suspended airstrikes and we were kind of surprised.
We were looking to see why they were suspended for a while, and we’re
hoping to understand why.”“What is really urgently needed right now, there are five women and
children being held by ISIS and we really need assistance right away to
help them be free and run away from ISIS. Plus humanitarian aides are
mostly needed at the moment for those refugees who ran away from ISIS
and made a way to get to the shelters. We’re here to tell the people in
the United States that this is what we are living through right now in
Iraq, and that’s what we need your help with at the moment.”

We've been nice.

Maybe too nice.

Maybe I've baby-ied?

Here's some harsh truths.

You claim to have 500,000 Yazidis, ma'am, there are no more than 30,000 Islamic State members in Iraq.

Maybe you should stop traveling to other countries to speak and do media appearances to advocate for war and instead return to Iraq, pick up a gun, urge your fellow Yazidis to take up arms and address the problem yourself.

If that sounds harsh, well your request for US forces on the ground due to five people being held sounds stupid and insane.

Worse yet, it also sounds cowardly.

Stop coming to the US demanding US troops and start using your position as a Member of the Iraqi Parliament to advocate for action from your own country's troops.

Call me harsh, call me a bitch, call me the c-word, I don't care.

The reality is there are international incidents. For example, an attack on an Olympics game, on an international conference, etc. would fall under that and would prompt an international response.

Kidnappings?

When Frank Sinatra Jr. was kidnapped, the US government did not go whining to Canada, Mexico or England for help.

Here, we didn't buy into the need to send US troops to another country to "Save Our Girls" (none of which were Americans) and I don't buy into sending US troops into Iraq for 5 or 50 kidnap victims.

That's a matter for the Iraqi government -- and if it can't address these issues, then it's a matter for the Iraqi people to demand a new government.

In fairness to Vian Dakhil, for decades now, the US government has presented itself, as Phil Ochs put it, as the "Cops of the World:"

We pick and choose as please, boys
Pick and choose as please
You'd best get down on your knees, boys
Best get down on your knees
We're hairy and horny and ready to shack
And we don't care if you're yellow or black
Just take off your clothes and lay down on your back
'Cause we're the cops of the world, boys
We're the cops of the world
Our boots are needing a shine, boys
Boots are needing a shine
But our Coca-Cola is fine, boys
Coca-Cola is fine
We've got to protect all our citizens fair
So we'll send a battalion for everyone there
And maybe we'll leave in a couple of years
'Cause we're the cops of the world, boys

And having presented that way, it's understandable that some around the world will wrongly assume the US military is just one 911 call away.

But that's not reality.

Nor is it reality that Vian Dakhil is speaking for most Iraqis.

However many Yazidis Vian Dakhil speaks for, the reality is that Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr speaks for many more and he is among the Iraqi leaders who are saying the US military needs to be out of Iraq. In addition, the highest ranking Catholic leader in Iraq again this week decried the US' assault on Iraq noting that the bombings were not helping anyone. AsInes San Martin (Curx Now) reported earlier this week:

The top Catholic official in Iraq says the current US-led bombing
campaign will not dislodge the radical Islamic State, and he is pleading
for a stronger response from the international community to ensure
Christians can remain in the region.“Bombing is also killing people, destroying the infrastructure,
houses, schools, churches,” said Patriarch Louis Sako, head of the
Chaldean Catholic Church.

So Vian Dakhil's remarks are really not typical.

You are hearing them in the western media and you are hearing her in Congress because a right-wing group is now bankrolling her and the call for greater war on Iraq.

There was a story this month about how Yazidis in the US were calling for greater war on Iraq. That story was shopped around to at least six journalists who passed on it because it was propaganda. Sadly, not everyone has ethics so two did write it up.

We've long defended the Yazidis here -- in part because they were wrongly characterized by the western press in the early days of the Iraq War as "devil worshipers" -- but we'll do less of that now.

That's too bad because the Yazidi people are not responsible for the money that is now supporting MP Vian Dakhil or for the other p.r. efforts being made.

But the fact that some levels of self-appointed leadership are now engaged in propaganda means all stories are suspect and I don't have the time to check them out with friends. So the Yazidis will still be noted but far less than what we once did.

And the reality will always be, for any country whose citizens are kidnapped, you need to work that out on your own. If your country can't handle a kidnapping, it needs a new government and needs it desperately.

The US government should stop the bombings immediately and focus all attention on helping the Iraqi officials arrive at a political solution which allows all Iraqis to be included and which promotes an Iraqi identity.

Instead, we're stuck with bombings passed off as a 'plan.'

There is no plan.

That was obvious in the hearings this week.

And we're going to focus now on yet another Congressional exchange, this one from the Wednesday House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.US House Rep Ted Poe: Ambassador would you say that the administration is at war with ISIS or not?Brett McGurk: Congressman, having seen it up close, I would say that we are at war -- at war with ISIS.US House Rep Ted Poe: It seems to me that our strategy is two-fold or maybe three-fold at this point. Send aid to different groups -- countries. There's sixty something countries that I understand are in the co-alition to fight ISIS. One is to do airstrikes as the chairman has mentioned. The success of those airstrikes depends upon who you're talking to. I do not believe they have been quiet as successful as we had hoped they would be. The other is to take Syrian moderate rebels -- vet, train and equip them to go back to Syria and defeat ISIS. How many of those people have been vetted, trained and equipped and sent back to Syria to fight ISIS.Brett McGurk: Congressman, again I have to say it's a DoD program and it's --US House Rep Ted Poe: It's none! Correct, Ambassador?[Cross talk]US House Rep Ted Poe: I mean, you're the Ambassador. You're represent the State Dept, the United States. We're at war with this country -- we're at war with ISIS. You can't tell me politically whether we have armed -- vetted, armed and trained anybody yet and sent them back to fight in Syria --Brett McGurk: NoUS House Rep Ted Poe: -- in ISIS. You can't answer that question?Brett McGurck: No, I think I can answer that question. I did answer it. The answer right now is: No. And --US House Rep Ted Poe: So none.Brett McGurk: d-designed -- It was designed to be a longterm program and we hopeUS House Rep Ted Poe: I understand Ambassador, just a second --Brett McGurk: We hope --US House Rep Ted Poe: Now you wait a minute. I'm asking the questions, you give the answers. The answer is, 'We have not trained any.' And none of them are back over there. Meanwhile ISIS is beheading people and committing all kinds of atrocities. But our plan -- if I understand our strategic plan -- it's to help aid, it's to drop bombs -- it's to train mercenaries to go back and fight ISIS in Syria -- none of which have been trained. How long is it going to take before we get all these people that are being trained back in Syria to fight? How long do you think that it will take?Brett McGurk: Well Congressman, the program is to train 5,000 per year. And the training, we hope, will start in March.US House Rep Ted Poe: So a year from March?Brett McGurk: And the program is to build --US House Rep Ted Poe: A year from March?Brett McGurk: -- about 5,000 by then. And we have to be very careful --US House Rep Ted Poe: Excuse me, Ambassador, I'm not clear.Brett McGurk: And we have to --US House Rep Ted Poe: Will it be 5,000 in March that will be trained? Or will it be a year from March -- 2016 -- before we have those 5,000 fighters that we send back to Syria?Brett McGurk: It's 5,000 trained per year. And part of the reason is the vetting standards. And we're being very careful about this. But we're not sitting on our hands --US House Rep Ted Poe: Excuse me, Mr. Ambassador,Brett McGurk: -- a lot of things in parallel.US House Rep Ted Poe: Excuse me, Mr. Ambassador, answer the question. Is it 5,000 in 2016? In March? That's our hope? To have them trained by then?Brett McGurk: The training, we hope, will begin in March. So it's --US House Rep Ted Poe: But it will take a year to train 5,000 people?Brett McGurk: Yes, that's right.US House Rep Ted Poe: So March of 2016? Then we have a plan. Then we have fighters. Then we send them to Syria. There's no telling what ISIS can do in that year and however many months it is. Does the United States have some other strategic plan other than arming these folks that aren't going to show up until 2016 dropping bombs -- that are marginal, whether they've been successful -- and helping with military aid to some of these coalition countries? Is there a strategic plan overall that you know about in the State Dept?Brett McGurk: Yes. The train and equip program is one small element of an over all campaign. And this is a multi-year campaign. And phase one -- Phase one is Iraq. What we're doing in Syria right now is degrading ISIL's capacity. And every time that we have had a local force on the ground that we could work with -- and Kobani's a good example of this or a Free Syrian --US House Rep Ted PoeReclaiming my time. What are we doing in Syria right now? I mean people are dying in Syria and the calvary isn't showing up until 2016 the way I understand it. Is that correct?Brett McGurk: Those trained and equipped units are not the only units on the field that we could work with in Syria, Congressm--US House Rep Ted Poe: Who else are we working with in Syria?Brett McGurk: Well we're working right now in Kobani with a number of elements. We're killing about a 100 fighters a --US House Rep Ted Poe: Who are these people that we're working withBrett McGurk: Well Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga thanks to a deal we worked out with the Turks to open up a corridoor to the Kurdistan Region --US House Rep Ted Poe: Are they working in Syria or are they working in Iraq?Brett McGurk: In Syria we've brought the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga from Iraq to Kobani.US House Rep Ted Poe: Last question, I'm sorry I'm out of time, last question: Are we going to put more boots on the ground, American military, in the Middle East to defeat ISIS?Brett McGurk: Uh, the president's policy is not to put combat forces on the -- on the ground in Iraq. But we have advisors --US House Rep Ted Poe: Be careful. Middle East. I'm not going to talk about Iraq. In the Middle East. Are more Americans going over to the Middle East to fight ISIS?Brett McGurk: We have about 30,000 troops in the region now but uh --US House Rep Ted Poe: Are more Americans going over to the Middle East to fight and defeat ISIS? Other than what's already there?Brett McGurk: Right now I think we have a pretty large substantial deployment force in the Middle East. I don't see the need for more right now. But again, I need to defer to my DoD colleagues.US House Rep Ted Poe: Because you don't know. I yield back.

That's part of the 'plan'?

That's how Barack Obama plans to address things? With forces who will arrive ready in March of 2016?

No wonder his 'plan' will take years.

A general note in closing, if you're sending things that aren't about Iraq to the public e-mail account, I'll work them in if I can and only if I can. We focus on Iraq and we focus on veterans. If you're article isn't about that it may or may not get noted. If you think, X number of years ago, you called something right then maybe you should write something new and not just send me your piece (on something not about Iraq and not about veterans) from X number of years ago.

You will vote to support war when they need your vote, Nancy will ensure.

But, if they don't need your vote, if they've got enough to win the vote without you, you can vote against it. You can even make noise about being against it.

The vote in question was on the spending bill, the $1.1 trillion spending bill. Nancy and Steve Israel, among others voted against it. Nancy is House Minority Leader and could have killed it if she wanted to. But she didn't want to. And she whines publicly about it being a give away for big donors and banks.

But, again, she could have killed it, she chose not to.

It's political theater and nothing more.

Nancy's a liar and she needed to come out against this bill because those of us in her district are pretty damn sick of her at this point and Nancy doesn't want to step down from Congress yet.

It's political theater and, honestly, I'd ignore Babington's nonsense if it wasn't for this outright lie:

It was an unusual spot late Thursday for the veteran California
lawmaker, who did as much as anyone to help President Barack Obama enact
his landmark health care law and wind down the war in Iraq.

What did that fool just write?

Since September, 3 Americans service member have died in the latest wave of this war and -- if you don't count Special-Ops -- there aren't even three thousands American troops in Iraq or over Iraq right now. Do we need to offer math skills to the press because the ratio is appalling and there's a good chance it will only get worse as Barack sends more troops into this latest wave of the never ending Iraq War.

Let's go to the Defense Dept to grasp the reality that a whore and liar like Charlie can't and won't tell you:

Airstrikes in Iraq and Syria

Click on country name for the latest airstrike information.

As of Nov. 27, 2014, the total cost of operations related to
ISIL since kinetic operations started on August 8, 2014 is $910 million
and the average daily cost is $8.1 million.

So click on Iraq -- right now the most recent airstrike info is December 10th -- and read about those bombings and note the fact that, as of November 27th, this wave of the war has already cost $910 million dollars -- and it only started in August.

And then let's all ask Charlie about the Iraq War winding down?

At the current spending levels, we're looking at close to $3 billion being spent on this latest wave from August 2014 to August 2015.

The Iraq War doesn't end, the US government refuses to allow it to end and press whores like Charlie Babington refuse to tell the truth. Shame on them.

Department of Defense Releases Second Quarter Suicide Information

Today, the Department of Defense released the quarterly suicide report (QSR) for the second quarter of calendar year 2014.The report summarizes suicide counts for
all services and components during the months of April through June of
this year. Counts were down in all components from the first quarter.
There were 70 suicides among service members in the active component, 14
suicides among service members in the reserves, and 20 suicides among
service members in the National Guard.
The report also shows annual suicide rates and counts for 2012 and 2013.
The QSR is intended to communicate the department's suicide data on a
routine basis. A breakdown of second quarter, 2014, suicide counts and
resources for service members and their families, who may be facing
challenges, can be found here.
Additional information is available on the Suicide Prevention Office website at www.suicideoutreach.org.
Service members or their friends and family seeking support can reach
out to the Military Crisis Line, which offers free and confidential
support to service members and their family or friends in crisis. The
service is staffed by caring, qualified responders from the U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), many who have served in the
military themselves. Support is offered through the crisis line, online
chat, and text-messaging services for all service members (active,
National Guard and reserve) and veterans 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
365 days a year by visiting the Military Crisis Line website at http://veteranscrisisline.net/ActiveDuty.aspx; Online Chat at http://www.veteranscrisisline.net/ChatTermsOfService.aspx; sending a text to: 838255 or calling toll free at: 1-800-273-8255, Press 1

In the face on the ongoing crisis, the House this week passed the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for America’s Veterans (SAV) Act. The Senate refuses to do the same.

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America issued the following yesterday:Washington D.C. (December 11, 2014) —
Susan and Richard Selke, parents of Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran
Clay Hunt, are imploring Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to lift his
Parliamentary hold on the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for America’s
Veterans (SAV) Act, which is preventing it from receiving a vote in the
Senate. The bill, named after their son, a Marine who died by suicide in
2011, will improve access to quality mental health care for veterans
and combat a national suicide crisis that’s resulting in the deaths of
22 veterans every day.The bipartisan legislation passed the House
by a unanimous voice vote on Tuesday. A full list of the bi-partisan
Senate co-sponsors can be found here: http://1.usa.gov/1sgzLXx.The Selkes, who have been advocating for the comprehensive
legislation since the summer, dropped off a petition of more than 60,000
signatures urging passage of the Clay Hunt SAV Act at Senator Coburn’s
office yesterday afternoon.Richard Selke spoke directly to Senator Coburn in a video: http://youtu.be/y42DfV4sJYg.
“I understand you are a man of principles, and that you very vehemently
and painstakingly watch over our national budget,” said Selke. “Susan
and I are conservative Republicans from the state of Texas. I appreciate
your vigilance over our budget. The bill we are talking about is
projected to cost about $22 million dollars. That’s a lot of money to
me. It’s a lot of money to you. But in the context of the value of a
human life, it is insignificant.”Selke noted that 22 veterans, on average, die by suicide every day.
“There are some things in this bill that might have saved Clay’s life,
and that might have saved some other veterans’ lives” if the resources
found in the Clay Hunt SAV Act would have been available.According to a recent survey
conducted by IAVA veterans, 47 percent of respondents said they know at
least one Iraq or Afghanistan veteran who has attempted suicide, while
40 percent of respondents know someone who has died by suicide, up three
points from 2013.The Senate is expected to end its current legislative session by
Friday. If the bill does not receive a vote in the Senate before
adjournment it dies and vets will be left to begin the entire process
again — if possible — in the next Congress.“We appreciate the House voting unanimously to support the bill and
the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate who have already given their
approval. Now Senator Coburn has to ask himself: How many vets will die
by suicide in the coming months because he alone decided to stand in
the way of one of the least costly bills in front of this Congress?”
asked IAVA Legislative Director Alex Nicholson.

Note to media: Email press@iava.org or call 212-982-9699 to speak with IAVA CEO and Founder Paul Rieckhoff or IAVA leadership.Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (www.IAVA.org) is the
nation's first and largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization
representing veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and has nearly 300,000
Member Veterans and civilian supporters nationwide. Celebrating its 10th
year anniversary, IAVA recently received the highest rating -
four-stars - from Charity Navigator, America's largest charity
evaluator.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Thursday, December 11, 2014. Chaos and violence continue, more lies to sell the current wave of the Iraq War continue, Senator Carl Levin exposed one of the lies that sold the 2003 invasion, and much more.

To sell Barack's latest wave in the never-ending Iraq War, liars strip events from the narratives, they remove and omit facts. It wasn't always that way. To start the illegal war in 2003, liars added details, fake ones, that (falsely) linked Iraq to the 9-11 attacks on the United States.

It was one false link, it was many.

We'll turn to Crapapedia for this example of Chris Hedges writing for the New York Times and promoting a false link in what can only be termed "government propaganda":

Most significant was a November 8, 2001 front page story about two former Iraqi military commanders who claimed to have trained foreign mujahedeen how to hijack planes without using guns.[17]
Hedges quoted a man he believed to be an Iraqi general as saying,
“These Islamic radicals… came from a variety of countries, including
Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt and Morocco. We were training these
people to attack installations important to the United States. ” The two
defectors also asserted there was a secret compound in Salman Pak facility where a German scientist was producing biological weapons.[18]According to Mother Jones,
“The impact of the article... was immediate: Op-eds ran in major
papers, and the story was taken to a wider audience through cable-TV
talk shows. When Condoleezza Rice, then George W. Bush’s national
security adviser, was asked about the story at a press briefing, she
said, ‘I think it surprises no one that Saddam Hussein is engaged in all
kinds of activities that are destabilizing.’” As late as 2006,
conservative magazines like The Weekly Standard and National Review continued to use the story to justify the invasion of Iraq.[19]

It later surfaced that the story was “an elaborate scam.” The
defector Hedges quoted, who identified himself as Lt. General Jamal
al-Ghurairy, was actually a former sergeant, and the real Ghurairy had
never left Iraq. Hedges said that he had taken the story at the request
of Lowell Bergman of Frontline, who wanted the defectors for his show but could not go to Beirut for the interview.

That was only one lie.

Today another lie was exposed.

Senator Carl Levin's office issued the following:

Thursday, December 11, 2014

WASHINGTON – Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, today plans to introduce into the Congressional
Record important new information about how Bush administration officials
misled the nation in advance of the Iraq War, and called on CIA
Director John Brennan to fully declassify an important 2003 CIA cable.Levin will introduce a letter he received from CIA Director John Brennan,
declassifying for the first time some details of a March 2003 CIA cable
warning the Bush administration against references to the allegation
that Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, had met before the
attacks in Prague, Czech Republic, with an Iraqi intelligence officer.
He also introduced a translated excerpt from a book by the former head
of Czech counterintelligence, describing U.S. pressure to confirm that
the meeting took place. In fact, no such meeting occurred. And he called
on Brennan to fully declassify the CIA cable.Following is Levin’s Senate floor speech on the matter, as prepared for delivery:Mr. President, I want to speak for a few moments about one of the
most significant events in my 36 years as United States Senator, the war
in Iraq. I want to speak about important historical records crucial to
our understanding of why we went to war against Iraq in 2003. I want to
enter into the public record recent revelations not yet made public. And
I make one more public call for a key document to be made fully public.I will begin by renewing a request to the Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, John Brennan. It is a request I have also made to
his predecessors: I ask Director Brennan to declassify fully a March 13,
2003 CIA cable debunking the contention that 9/11 hijacker Mohammad
Atta had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official named Ahmad
al-Ani.Earlier this year, Director Brennan wrote to me, refusing, as did his
predecessors, to fully declassify the CIA cable. But in his letter to
me he makes public for the first time a few lines from that document.
While this is a significant addition to the public record, and I will
discuss that in a moment, it is still not the full cable, and I am
calling on him to declassify and release the full cable.Now, in order to understand why I am making that request, we need to return to early 2003.On March 6, 2003, just two weeks before U.S. troops would cross the
Iraqi border, President Bush held a prime-time televised press
conference. In that press conference he mentioned the Sept. 11, 2001,
terror attacks eight times, often in the same breath as Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein. There was a concerted campaign on the part of the Bush
administration to connect Iraq in the public mind with the horror of the
Sept. 11 attacks. That campaign succeeded. According to public polls in
the week before the Iraq war, half or more of Americans believed Saddam
was directly involved in the attacks. One poll taken in September 2003,
six months after we invaded Iraq, found that nearly 70 percent of
Americans believed it likely that Saddam Hussein was personally involved
in the Sept. 11 attacks. Americans who believed in a link between Iraq
and 9/11 overwhelmingly supported the idea of invading Iraq. Of course,
connections between Saddam and 9/11 or al Qaeda were fiction.America’s intelligence community was pressed to participate in the
administration’s media campaign. Just a week after the President’s
prime-time press conference, on March 13, 2003, CIA field staff sent a
cable to CIA headquarters, responding to a request for information about
a report that Mohammad Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackings, had
met in 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence official in the Czech capital of
Prague. In stark terms, this CIA cable from the field warned against
U.S. government officials citing the report of the alleged Prague
meeting.Yet the notion of such a meeting was a centerpiece of the
administration’s campaign to create an impression in the public mind
that Saddam was in league with the al Qaeda terrorists who attacked us
on 9/11. On multiple occasions, including national television
appearances, Vice President Dick Cheney cited reports of the meeting, at
one point calling it “pretty well confirmed.” Officials from Donald
Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, who set up a sort of rogue intelligence analysis
operation, briefed senior officials with a presentation citing the
Prague meeting as a “known contact” between Iraq and al Qaida.Now, why am I bringing up a CIA cable from more than a decade ago?
Isn’t this old, well-covered terrain? No, it isn’t. This is about giving
the American people a full account of the march to war as new
information becomes available. It is about trying to hold leaders who
misled the public accountable. It is about warning future leaders of
this nation that they must not commit our sons and daughters to battle
on the basis of false statements.Mr. President, there is no more grave decision for a nation to make
than the decision to go to war. And there is no more important issue for
every member of Congress than the decision to authorize the use of
military force. A decision to authorize force is a decision to unleash
the might of our armed forces – the strongest military on the planet. It
commits the men and women of our armed forces to fight, and perhaps to
die, on the battlefield. The decision to go to war must be careful,
considered, and based on the facts.Such careful consideration was tragically absent in the march to war in Iraq.Here is what the Vice President said on December 9, 2001, in an
interview on “Meet the Press:” “It’s been pretty well confirmed that he
[Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the
Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months
before the attack.”Far from “pretty well confirmed,” there was almost no evidence that
such a meeting took place. Just a single unsubstantiated report, from a
single source, and a mountain of information indicating there was no
such meeting, including the fact that travel and other records indicated
that Atta was almost certainly in the United States at the time of the
purported meeting in Prague.It was highly irresponsible for the Vice President to make that
claim. Calling a single, unconfirmed report from a single source “pretty
well confirmed,” as he did on Dec. 9, 2001, was a reckless statement to
make on such a grave topic as war, in the face of overwhelming doubt
that such a meeting occurred.Yet Vice President Cheney’s reckless statements continued, even as
evidence mounted that there was no Prague meeting. In September 2002, he
said Atta “did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions.
And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in
Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official.”The Vice President made those statements in the face of a
then-classified June 2002 CIA assessment that said the alleged meeting
was “not verified,” called the information about it “contradictory,” and
described assessments of Iraqi cooperation with al Qaida terror plots
as “speculative.” The Vice President made those statements in the face
of a July 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, which reported that
there was no evidence that Atta was in the Czech Republic at the time.
He made those statements despite a Defense Intelligence Agency
memorandum in August 2002 rejecting the claims by a rogue intelligence
analysis shop at the Pentagon that the meeting was an example of a
“known contact” between Iraq and al Qaida.That brings us to the March 13, 2003 cable. Mr. President, it is
unfortunate that I cannot fully lay out the contents of that cable,
because much of it remains classified. But as the Senate Intelligence
Committee’s 2006 “Phase II” report indicates, it appears that the cable
was sent in response to a request from headquarters at Langley for
comment on the claim that Atta and al-Ani had met in Prague because the
White House was considering a reference to a Prague meeting in a speech.
At that time, according to then-CIA Director George Tenet’s memoir, the
CIA had been given a draft of a speech by Vice President Cheney
containing assertions about connections between Iraq and al Qaida. Tenet
writes in his memoir that he had to object to the President that the
speech went “way beyond what the intelligence shows. We cannot support
the speech and it should not be given.”Mr. President, the text of this cable and the information surrounding
it was almost entirely redacted by the CIA from the Intelligence
Committee’s 2006 Phase II report. A number of us objected to that
redaction at the time the report was made public; indeed, the Majority
Leader introduced legislation which I cosponsored that would have
declassified the cable, legislation Republicans blocked. At the time of
the report’s release, I joined several members of the Intelligence
Committee, including Ranking Member Rockefeller, Senators Feinstein,
Wyden, Bayh, Mikulski and Feingold, in concluding that the
administration’s decision to keep the contents of the cable classified
“represents an improper use of classification authority by the
intelligence community to shield the White House.”In the years since I have sought declassification of the March 2003
CIA cable on numerous occasions. Twice, in 2011 and 2012, I wrote to
then-CIA Director Petraeus asking him to declassify the cable. Then in
February 2013, I asked Director Brennan during his confirmation hearing
whether he would contact the Czech government to ask if they would
object to declassification of the cable, and he responded, “Absolutely,
Senator, I will.”Despite his commitment, I heard nothing from Director Brennan for
some time. Finally, in March of this year, more than a year after his
public commitment to me, I received a letter from Director Brennan. Mr.
President, I ask unanimous consent that Director Brennan’s March 13,
2014, letter to me be entered into the record.The letter contains no indication that he had asked the Czech
government for its view, as he committed to do. But Director Brennan’s
letter includes, and therefore finally declassifies, this very clear
statement from the cable: “[T]here is not one USG [counterterrorism] or
FBI expert that … has said they have evidence or ‘know’ that [Atta] was
indeed [in Prague]. In fact, the analysis has been quite the opposite.”Again, that cable was sent to CIA headquarters on March 13, 2003 – a
week before our invasion of Iraq. But the Vice President of the United
States, Dick Cheney, continued to suggest the meeting may have taken
place. He said the following about the meeting on “Meet the Press” on
September 14, 2003 – six months after CIA received that cable: “We’ve
never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of
confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.” Here is what he
told the Denver Post newspaper on January 9, 2004: “We’ve never been
able to collect any more information on that. That was the one that
possibly tied the two together to 9/11.” Here is what he told CNN on
June 17, 2004: “We have never been able to confirm that, nor have we
been able to knock it down. We just don’t know.”Mr. President, those statements were simply not true. We did know.
We did know that there was no evidence that such a meeting had taken
place. We did know there was ample evidence it did not take place. We
did know that there was, as the CIA cable says, “not one” government
expert who said there was evidence that Atta met with Iraqi intelligence
in Prague. The Vice President recklessly disregarded the truth, and he
did so in a way calculated to maintain support for the administration's
decision to go to war in Iraq.There is a second recent revelation about how the “Prague meeting”
progressed from unsubstantiated report to justification for war. It
comes from Jiri Ruzek, who headed the Czech counterintelligence service
on and after 9/11. Mr. Ruzek published a memoir earlier this year, which
we have had translated from Czech. It recounts the days after the
terror attack, including how his nation’s intelligence services first
reported a single-source rumor of a Prague meeting between Atta and
al-Ani, how CIA officials under pressure from CIA headquarters in turn
pressured him to substantiate the rumor, and how U.S. officials
pressured the Czech government when Czech intelligence officials failed
to produce the confirmation that the Bush administration sought.Mr. Ruzek writes, “It was becoming more and more clear that we had
not met expectations and did not provide the ‘right’ intelligence
output.” Mr. Ruzek goes on: “The Americans showed me that anything can
be violated, including the rules that they themselves taught us. Without
any regard to us, they used our intelligence information for propaganda
press leaks. They wanted to mine certainty from unconfirmed suspicion
and use it as an excuse for military action. We were supposed to play
the role of useful idiot thanks to whose initiative a war would be
started.”That’s chilling. We have a senior intelligence official of a friendly
nation describing the pressure that he and other Czech officials were
under to give the Bush administration material it could use to justify a
war.When it came to the most serious decision a government can make – the
decision to commit our sons and daughters to battle – the Bush
administration was playing games with intelligence. The full, still
classified cable includes critically important, relevant information,
and it has been redacted and denied to the public in order to protect
those in the Bush White House who are responsible.The March 13, 2003, cable is an invaluable record in helping the
American people understand how their elected officials conducted
themselves in going to war. Continuing to cloak this document with a
veil of secrecy, revealing a few sentences at a time, allows those who
misled the American people to continue escaping the full verdict of
history. It deprives the American people of a complete understanding of
how we came to invade Iraq. In his letter to me, Director Brennan
writes, “I understand that your principal concern is that the historical
record be as complete as possible regarding this period in our history,
and on this point we are in agreement.” But Director Brennan’s
apparent refusal to do what he has committed to do – to ask the Czech
government if it objects to release of the cable – now takes on the
character of a continuing cover-up.Mr. President, I believe decision-makers should have to face the
full, unadulterated, unredacted truth about their decisions. The
American people should know the full story – not just so we can
understand the decisions in 2002 and 2003 that took us to war, but as a
warning to future leaders against the misuse of intelligence and the
abuse of power.

###

Again, they added lies -- lots of them -- to sell war on Iraq in 2002 and 2003 and today they strip away reality as they attempt to resell it.

But while we're all encouraged to call out Bully Boy Bush, the Cult of St. Barack works overtime to ensure that the Christ-child is never called out.

Yesterday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing. During it, a member offered a testimonial to the greatness:

US House Rep Gregory Meeks: It's easy for many of us to be up here and think that it's simple. We thought it was simple to get rid of Saddam Hussein. We said that it would take just a few days. In fact, we got on the ship that said Mission Accomplished a few days after shock and awe. I am glad we are not being that simplistic about this. The administration has been honest to say it will take years to get this done and to get it done right not based upon emotion, not based upon trying, just get it together so we can say rah-rah [. . .]

Testimonials and endorsements can be important. But let's first see just what sort of person was slobbering over Barack. Here's how CREW sees Meeks:

A swirling federal corruption probe into crooked charities
associated with Rep. Meeks is just the tip of the iceberg in the
congressman’s litany of ethical lapses.Rep. Meeks has accepted numerous improper gifts while in office,
including a below-market rate on a new home, major loans that he failed
to disclose for years, and discounted rent on his district office. He
has also accepted at least six trips to Caribbean resorts from a
non-profit backed by convicted financier R. Allen Stanford, on whose
behalf Rep. Meeks may have sought a favor from the late Venezuelan
president Hugo Chavez.

Nine-term member of Congress representing New York’s 5th district

Under federal investigation for his ties to several corrupt
non-profit groups, including one that lost track of thousands of dollars
intended for victims of Hurricane Katrina

"It's complicated. It's going to take some time. We're going to have to figure this out," declared Meeks but he wasn't talking about his legal strategy.

First thing Meeks might figure out is how to pronounce areas in Iraq. Erbil can be spelled Arbil but no one pronounces it "EE-BRILL."

Nor does anyone say "KurDICKstan."

It's Kurdistan.

Gregory Meeks, please keep your dick out of Kurdistan.

Yesterday's House Foreign Affairs Committee may have actually been hugely revealing in a way no one noticed.

US House Rep Albio Sires: Can you talk a little about Camp Liberty and any of the abuses by the Iraqis. I know you're on the discussion.Brett McGurk: Well I get a briefing on this every single day. I get reports from the residents and also from the United Nations. And as you know UN monitoring teams confirms to us about humanitarian supplies and the overall situation at the camp. We look at it every single day. My colleague Jonathan Winer who's our senior advisor on the MEK resettlements. He's in Albania today with a team, an interagency team with DHS represented as well -- representatives as well. And we've gotten about 600 residents of Camp Liberty out of Camp Liberty and out of Iraq to safety over the past year and we're looking to increase that number this year and Albania has been very helpful in this regard. And Jonathan Weiner has really done a heroic, courageous job of getting this moving. And I think the new government will be even more cooperative. And we want to get all the residents of Camp Liberty -- as I've testified before -- out of Iraq to safety. That is our goal and we're working with partners around the world to achieve that goal. And right now Albania has been extremely cooperative and we should thank them for taking in hundreds of residents. And the residents are assimilating quite well in Albania. But Jonathan -- my colleague -- Mr. Winer is there addressing this issue right now, and I'm sure he'd very happy to follow up with you.

We are
continuing to follow with urgency the situation at Camp Ashraf in Iraq.
The United States reiterates its condemnation of the horrific attack
that took place on September 1 and we express our condolences to the
families and friends of the victims.We further reiterate our support for the United Nations Assistance
Mission (UNAMI) and its efforts to conduct an independent fact finding
investigation into this terrible event and to document what took place.
We have called on the Government of Iraq to fully support UNAMI’s
efforts to conduct a full investigation of its own and to help find and
return to safety those who are missing. We insist that the perpetrators
of this barbarous act be brought to justice.We also note the troubling statements issued by the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) praising the attack, and call on the
Government of Iran to use whatever influence it might have with groups
that may be holding missing persons from the camp to secure their
immediate release.Regarding the immediate situation at Camp Ashraf, we urge all parties
to cooperate with a plan proposed by UNAMI to ensure the safe and
secure relocation of the survivors to Camp Hurriya as soon as possible.
Consistent with this plan, we call on the Government of Iraq to move
expeditiously to enhance security structures within Camp Hurriya,
pursuant to the plan discussed with UNAMI, and we call on the MEK to
make all necessary preparations to move remaining residents at Camp
Ashraf to Camp Hurriya in full cooperation with UNAMI. The United States
stands behind the UNAMI efforts to resolve this crisis.The State Department has appointed a Senior Advisor for MEK
Resettlement, Jonathan Winer, to oversee our efforts to help resettle
the residents of Camp Hurriya to safe, permanent, and secure locations
outside of Iraq, in addition to those countries, such as Albania, that
have admirably assisted the United Nations in this important
humanitarian mission.

He's been 'on the job' since at least September 2013 and Brett's proud of him for finding homes in that time for 600 Ashraf residents?

Most people presented with approximately 3,000 people who needed to get out of country -- a life-or-death issue -- would work to successfully get them out in 90 days tops. Check out previous evacuation efforts by the US is you doubt that.

But the White House is fine with it taking 15 months for Winer to relocate 600 people is acceptable?

At this rate, it will take over five years to relocate all the refugees -- over five years to do what previous administrations accomplished in 90 days.

No wonder Barack thinks his 'plan' (bombing Iraq) will require years to 'fix' things.

By the way, Brett may be impressed with Winer's work but he's likely the only one.

Not only is 600 a ridiculously small number, Winer's position isn't important enough in the eyes of the State Dept.

Jonathan Winer, who you also may know, visited Tripoli in February in
his role as Special Coordinator for Libya and met with a variety of
Libyan and international partners, and he’s working closely with
Ambassador Satterfield and our NEA team.

Spero pointed out:Jonathan Winer, the new Special Coordinator for Libya was previously appointed
by the State Department as Senior Advisor for MEK Resettlement in 2013.
In that capacity, he was tasked with overseeing USG efforts to help
resettle the residents of Camp Hurriya to permanent, and secure
locations outside of Iraq. He also previously served as chief counsel and principal legislative assistant to then Senator Kerry for 10 years and was a DAS at INL.

Again, Brett may be impressed but the State Dept and White House felt it was such a nothing assignment that they tasked him to be Special Coordinator for Libya as well.

As to Barack and his ridiculous 'plan,' it does not take years.

Even Meeks can't be such an idiot to believe that nonsense.

Iraq needs a political solution -- even Barack has said that.

A political solution dissolves support for the Islamic State as well as indifference to fighting it -- they are not the same thing. There are Sunnis who support the Islamic State in Iraq because of the targeting of Sunnis. There are Sunnis who look the other way due to the targeting of Sunnis. A political solution that truly includes the Sunnis -- which means ending the targeting -- makes it impossible for the Islamic State to operate freely.

Abu Ahmed was an essential member of the earliest incarnation of the
group. He had been galvanised into militancy as a young man by an
American occupation that he and many like him believed was trying to
impose a power shift in Iraq, favouring the country’s larger Shia
population at the expense of the dominant Sunnis. His early role in what
would become Isis led naturally to the senior position he now occupies
within a revitalised insurgency
that has spilled across the border into Syria. Most of his colleagues
regard the crumbling order in the region as a fulfilment of their
ambitions in Iraq – which had remained unfinished business, until the
war in Syria gave them a new arena.He agreed to speak publicly after more than two years of discussions,
over the course of which he revealed his own past as one of Iraq’s most
formidable and connected militants – and shared his deepening worry
about Isis and its vision for the region. With Iraq
and Syria ablaze, and the Middle East apparently condemned to another
generation of upheaval and bloodshed at the hands of his fellow
ideologues, Abu Ahmed is having second thoughts. The brutality of Isis
is increasingly at odds with his own views, which have mellowed with age
as he has come to believe that the teachings of the Koran can be
interpreted and not read literally.

His misgivings about what the Islamic State has become
led him to speak to the Guardian in a series of expansive
conversations, which offer unique insight into its enigmatic leader and
the nascent days of the terror group – stretching from 2004, when he met
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Camp Bucca, to 2011, when the Iraqi insurgency
crossed the border into Syria.

Zach Beauchamp (Vox) sums up Chulov's report, "In other words: without the Iraq war and American prisons there meant to detain possible terrorists, ISIS as we know it wouldn't exist."

Liars like Senator Barbara Boxer want to pretend that atrocities happened in Syria but not in Iraq.

And in the face of the disappearing of Sunnis -- via execution and via vanishing into the prisons -- the Sunni community was not silent. They were thrilled, for example, when Nouri lost the 2010 elections. But Barack Obama demanded Nouri get a second term (and the US brokered The Erbil Agreement that gave loser Nouri a second term). They voted and they won but their votes didn't count.

Then their representatives and other politicians attempted another means to justice: A no-confidence vote on Nouri.

This would have removed Nouri as prime minister in 2012.

Iraqiya's Ayad Allawi, Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr, Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani and others all came together for this effort.

And the White House, specifically Vice President Joe Biden, leaned hard on Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to bury the effort. (Talabani declared he had the power to remove people's names from the petition even if they admitted they signed it. He had no such power.)

So they'd used their votes, the ballot box.

And then their votes were overturned.

They'd turned to their political leaders and the leaders used a Constitutional measure to attempt to remove Nouri only to see Jalal Talabani invent a 'power' that didn't exist to destroy the petition (his only legal role was to officially present the petition to Congress).

So now their politicians couldn't help them.

They then took to the streets and protested continuously for over a year.

They were targeted by Nouri and his thugs.

Some were followed from protests to their homes in an effort at intimidation.

Even after that massacre, it would take Barack over a year to finally stop supporting thug Nouri.

Even after that massacre, Iraqis would continue to protest.

They'd been denied redress via the ballot box, they'd been denied justice when their elected officials attempted to seek it.

Now their protests were being ignored and Nouri was calling them "terrorists" and as 2013 ended and 2014 began, his forces began attacking protests as Nouri insisted -- publicly, on Iraqi television -- that he would burn the sites down with the protesters in them.

But some Sunnis have joined them and many others have decided to turn their eye away because of the Iraqi government's targeting, hunting, killing, imprisoning of Sunnis.

The US government can drop all the bombs from planes that they want for as many years as they want.

It's not a 'plan.'

It's also not the answer to how you remove support for the Islamic State.

And until you remove support -- direct or complicit -- you can't remove the Islamic State from Iraq.

And Iraq may have a new prime minister -- Haider al-Abadi -- but Sunnis continue to be killed, Sunni civilians, by the Iraqi government.

Iraqi Spring MC Tweeted the most recent civilians -- including children -- killed with the never ending bombing of residential neighborhoods in Falluja -- and these bombings are the Iraqi military bombing the homes of Falluja -- Falluja being a Sunni dominant city.

Until you admit what's happened in Iraq, especially what's been done to
the Sunnis (most notably in the last four years, but actually since the
2003 invasion), you're never going to get to peace because you're lying
and aiding the violence by doing so.

Their joint-post notes that Barack's authorization for war on Iraq passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (on party lines -- and this means it now moves to the full Senate floor -- if it's not voted on before the next Congress is sworn in, it would automatically die and need to be re-introduced in order to be voted on).

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.